That, I thought, was the profession that went with the kind of woman I wanted to become: one who is free to do whatever she chooses. I decided early that I would be a writer when I grew up. In the fort, I was neither ostracized nor ill at ease-I was self-reliant, brave, ingeniously surviving, if lost.īooks are the other natural habitat for a child who loves words and adventures, and I was content when my parents read me Moby-Dick, Pippi Longstocking, or The Hobbit. I played Robinson Crusoe in a small wooden fort my parents built from a kit in the backyard, where I sorted through the acorns and onion grass I gathered for sustenance.

I was also domineering, impatient, relentlessly verbal, and, as an only child, often baffled by the mores of other kids. I preferred make-believe that revolved around adventure, starring pirates and knights. The explorer has to express shock, and then say, “So, what’s new?” To which the mummy replies, “ You.” I was not big on playing house. My father and I would trade off roles: One of us had to lie very still with eyes closed and arms crossed over the chest, and the other had to complain, “I’ve been searching these pyramids for so many years-when will I ever find the tomb of Tutankhamun?” (This was in the late seventies when Tut was at the Met, and we came in from the suburbs to visit him frequently.) At the climax of the game, the explorer stumbles on the embalmed Pharaoh and-brace yourself-the mummy opens his eyes and comes to life. My favorite game when I was a child was Mummy and Explorer. Read a review of The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy, in Wesleyan magazine.This work is based on “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” by Ariel Levy, which originally appeared in The New Yorker in 2013. An excerpt from The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy, published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House, LLC, New York.

The rules do not apply book